‘THE MAGAZINE 


University of North Carolina 
CHAPEL HILL, N. C. 


OLD SERIES VoL. 50 NUMBER 3 NEw SERIES VOL. 37 


Tah i¢to 
Contents 

PAGE 
THE Common Herp. , William D. Harris............ 121 

Epwarp Kipper Granam: Tracuer AND INTERPRETER 
or Mopern Citizensuip. Louis R. Wilson...... 124 

RELIGION AND THE CoLLEGE Campus. Walliam H. 
TEMES. OLB oye We bielalaie I te PANN Ain) 1) 1338 
nope AND EP RInNDsSHIP. | J.B. Stratton. ............ 135 
PiGEVIEVED IN, OIGNS. of. Wei Love. e.cs ie eee 136 
Mom raodome. Wo: Horners... eco ls 142 
OE as 7 145 
SeemmoreNovenisT. SK ata. a. el ke ee es 154 
Tue ConFEDERATE Stature Speaks. Henry D. Stevens 157 
Pee ONoOnmavsteMm. John Kerr... cb eee eee 160 

PHASES OF THE STUDENT CONFERENCE IN Des MorneEs. 
AY So OU PPR MOE IML ONL Uaal ar Mg 163 
EEN CROAT EA Lo 165 


Deemer drt | Wie Ge TUF Ma i) oe a Se es 174 


A Pew Pear Praver 


66 fel" are agonizing ober passion 
and prejudice, both real and 
seeming injustice and inequality, and 
the blackness of despair would settle 
ober our land tere it not that faith, 
hope and charity still abide—faith that 
a Deeper knotoleage of the twisdom of 
our institutions toill be tmparted to 
eberp son and daughter of the republic; 
hope that more and more all men will 
turn from the contemplation of their 
rights fo a consideration of their duties, 
and charity for all tobo are not bicfous, 
but tobo, through stress of circum 
stances, babe become embittered. 

God of our fathers, take from us, if 
Thou wilt, material prosperity and 
national glory, but gibe us individually 
and collectively all the pears to come 
faith, bope and charity.” 


Tue Common Herp 198 


others, to the community. A nation of independent, liberty- 
loving individuals—as we are—will not be stampeded into 
communism. If we mistake not, a reaction from the com- 
munistic trend has already set in. 

We believe in a world safe for democracy. But a 
democracy, as our race conceives it, respects the rights of the 
individual and gives him opportunity to cultivate his 
capacities—for the ultimate good of the whole. But this is 
no time for easy-going tolerance, for temporizing with red- 
shirt radicals. The great tradition of ordered liberty and 
progress is our proudest, most precious heritage. We refuse 
to be forced to the level of the common herd. We are human 
beings with God-given attributes and rights. We are not 
animals to be corralled by Russian or Prussian communism. 
We cling to the political and social philosophy of an Anglo- 
Saxon ancestry. We have not that individual cowardice and 
spirit of shirking which tends to communism. ’Tis man’s 
God-given duty and privilege to work out his own destiny. 

The individual should regard the welfare of the com- 
munity, but there must and will be a due recognition of the 
individual’s rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness.” 


124 THe MaGazIne 


Edward Kidder Graham: Ceacher and 
Interpreter of Wodern Citisenship* 


Louis R. Witson 


In 1909, in an address delivered before the North Carolina 
Teachers’ Assembly on “The Teacher and Modern Democ- 
racy,” Edward Kidder Graham, then professor of English at 
the University, employed these significant words: 

“The best teacher I ever had, I think, the one that brought 
me to myself and took me out of the ranks of the ‘undesir- 
ables,’ was a man who knew less than any teacher I ever had. 
He did not know enough to ‘work’ 9th grade arithmetic, or 
translate the fables in Harkness’ first Latin book; yet he 
gave to every boy in his room the ideal of liberal citizenship 
for his possession, and the ambition to make the most of him- 
self for the sake of the State.” 

Again, in 1911, as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, 
in an essay entitled, “A North Carolina Teacher,” written 
in loving appreciation of his former teacher, the late Pro- 
fessor Thomas Hume, he challenged a statement of Professor 
Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University, in these significant 
words: ‘‘He is a sadly astray guide who calls teaching ‘a 
sterile field.’ That will not be true until pliable humanity 
is worn down to a breed of barren metal. Experience re- 
veals a different display of facts. Few of the achievements 
of men have been solitary triumphs. They were first laid 
with words of grateful discipleship at the feet of some 
teacher.” 

Again, in 1914, in his inaugural address, when he was 
assuming in solemn assembly the high duties of the first 


*Read before the North Carolina State Literary and Historical Asso- 
ciation, Raleigh, N. C., November 22d. 


Epwarp Kipper GRAHAM 125 


teacher of the State, and as such was making clear the 
function of the institution over which he had been called to 
preside, he said: ‘The professions of law, medicine, the 
‘ ministry, journalism, commerce, and the rest are essential to 
the upbuilding of a democratic commonwealth; but they 
must be interpreted, not as adventures in selfish advancement, 
but as enterprises in constructive statesmanship, liberating 
both the state and the man. It is the function of the uni- 
versity, not only to train men in the technique of the law, but 
to lift them to a higher level of achievement by making them 
living epistles of social justice; not only to make clever 
practitioners of medicine, but to lift them into conservators 
of the public health; not merely to train teachers in the 
facts and methods of education, but’”—your attention is 
particularly directed to this sentiment—“but to fire them 
with the conviction that they are the Beg oC NS creators of a 
new civilization.” 


And, still again, in the tense autumn of 1917, to his fellow- 
teachers in annual assembly, after America had taken up the 
gauge of battle in defense of human liberty, and looking with 
rare penetration beyond the vale of bitter conflict to the 
present hour of victory, he said: “We are to form after this 
war, as men have after every great human upheaval, a new 
concept of what it means to be a good man and a good citizen. 


“The need of the world for intelligent and sympathetic 
leadership that constitutes the distinctive service of teaching 
makes freshly luminous the great and joyous job we have to 
do in the world, and gives to us a new inspiration for doing 
it superlatively well. 


“The world is unifying itself in this terrible ordeal of fire 
to write, not for us alone, but for all mankind, a new chapter 
in progress in new terms of the divine nature of human life, 
through which, under God, we shall have a new birth of 
material and spiritual freedom. And of this, that is nothing 


126 Tue Magazine 


less than a new center of gravity of all human conduct, the 
priest and prophet of democracy, whether peaceful or — 
militant, is the teacher in the schools of the nation.” 


These terse sentences, ladies and gentlemen, taken from 
four notable addresses delivered within the the decade 1909- 
1918, in which Graham’s genius for leadership and rare elo- 
quence fired the imagination of the State and gripped the 
thinking of the nation, set forth in focal light the high ideal 
that he cherished for himself—that of becoming in full truth 
teacher and interpreter of the larger citizenship. They re- 
veal the heart of the great matter at which he wrought from 
the time he received the priceless possession from the hands 
of his unlettered teacher until in the full flower of his 
strength he was called to pass in on to other hands. 


It is to the development of this theme, therefore, this con- 
ception of the teacher-interpreter, and to the applications 
which he made of it in his notable career as educational 
statesman, that I shall devote myself in the moments you have 
so generously given me as your representative on this occa- 
sion to pay tribute to his high service. 


Graham was no believer in what he was pleased to style 
the “pouring in” process of teaching, the process of present- 
ing the data of learning without fusing it with life and spirit. 
To know the date at which Shakespeare wrote “The 
Tempest,” or to be familiar with the legendary sources from 
which the Hamlet story was drawn, were not for him the 
essentials in the study of the master dramatist. To teach 
these wonderful plays in this spiritless, routine way was to 
miss the enchanting beauty of the one, and leave the Hamlet 
out of the other. On the contrary he held that instructor to 
be most of worth who utilized the media of instruction, 
whether the classics, the applied sciences, or vocational sub- 
jects, as agencies by means of which the student found him- 
self. The mastery of the body of facts involved was essential, 


Epwarp Kipper GraHAaM 127 
to be sure, but not the highest end. In his classroom he 
taught his students English literature, but while doing this 
the real objective which he had in mind was not that his 
pupils should acquire the data of literature, but its spirit; 
not that he should so drill them that they might pass the 
examinations set, but that in the light of new and higher 
standards first seen in the illumined page of some master 
spirit, they might so examine and discipline and relate them- 
selves to the task of the hour as to learn the fine art of true 
living. In 1915, in an address to the student body at the 
opening of the University, he summarized his thought as to 
where instruction and training should lead in these words: 


_ “No student is truly trained unless he has learned to do 
pleasantly, and promptly, and with clear-cut accuracy every 
task he has obligated himself todo; . . . unless he puts 
into his work his own personal curiosities and opens his 
faculties to a lively and original interest in his work that 
leads him to test for himself what he is told; . . . unless 
he gets from his contact with the master spirits of the race 
those qualities of taste and behavior and standards of judg- 
ment that constitute a true gentleman; . . . unless he 
realizes that he does not live to himself alone, but is a part 
of an organic community life that is the source of most of the 
privileges he enjoys.” Continuing the theme a year later to 
another incoming class, and phrasing it differently, he said: 
“To become a true University man . . . does not mean 
the abandonment of any legitimate sort of happiness what- 
ever, nor the loss of any freedom. The adventure of discov- 
ering and liberating one’s mind, far from being a dull and 
dreary performance, is the most thrilling of all youthful ad- 
ventures. There is no question of self-punishment or ex- 
ternal discipline, but only the freedom of becoming one’s 
own master, instead of a slave to the tyranny of one’s low 
and cheap desires. To come into this insight is to see this 


128 THe Magazine 


organized discovery of the mind that we call education, not as 
learning, but as a love of knowledge; not as a matter of being 
industrious, but of loving industry; not as a matter of giv- 
ing us a good start toward a middle-age success, but to enable 
us to keep growing, and so lay hold on the eternal spring 


of life.” 


Graham was an idealist in the truest sense. But he was 
also a pragmatist remarkably successful in combining his 
ideals in a program in which they could be realized. As 
such, he was not merely content to present ideals to his stu- 
dents, to interpret for them the finer things of the spirit, to 
point the way to larger citizenship. He went a step further 
and demonstrated the way by which they could begin to 
realize their ideals for themselves. He solved this problem, 
which to most teachers proves a stone of offense, by calling 
upon the student body to become a self-governing group, to 
put the ideal of good citizenship to work on their own 
campus; to discover for themselves the relationships which 
they should sustain to the University and to one another, and 
then so safeguard and respect them as to perfect and make 
workable the democracy which they constituted—a thing 
which, under his inspirational guidance, so challenged their 
imagination and hearts as to result in the disappearance of 
prodding discipline and the establishment of ideal standards 
of student conduct. He began by presenting to his students 
the facts of literature. Huis task was ended only when at some 
later day there stood before him the self-discovered, self- 
disciplined, self-governing student-citizen-to-be. 


Graham’s conception of the function of the University— 
a conception which won for him immediate recognition as a 
new type of virile constructive educational leader—was of the 
same sort. He conceived of it as an aggregate of teachers and 
interpreters fused into the State’s chief instrument, not 
merely for assisting local students in acquiring a body of 


Epwarp Kipper GrRaHamM : 129 


learning and finding themselves, but also for carrying truth 
to every citizen of the commonwealth. He would have it not 
only carry information to those who sought it, but through the 
information thus carried would so enrich the inner life of 
those to whom the truth was borne that they would find their 
chief happiness in making the common good more widely 
prevail. 


Graham’s program for the schools and colleges of the 
nation during the stress of war was similar. The war simply 
clarified and intensified his conception of their task. Their 
function had always been to furnish men ideals by which to 
live, and, if need be, die. In the nation’s supreme ordeal of 
fire it was the same. This was their birthright and most 
sacred duty. Theirs, above all others, was the coveted privi- 
lege of posting on the lintels of the nation the undying prin- 
ciples of justice, freedom, and brotherhood for which America 
has stood, and for which, in the face of fire and sword, and 
death, she would ever stand. In three moving addresses de- 
livered. during the war period before teacher audiences— 
“Certain War-Time Duties of Teachers,” “Patriotism and 
the Schools,” “The American University and the New 
Nationalism’—he proclaimed them the sources of morale, 
the deep springs of spirit and sublime faith through which 
the youth of America destined for the fields of France would 
prove equal to their task. So firm was his convictions that 
this was the high privilege of American colleges, and so con- 
fident was he that his Alma Mater had availed herself of it 
and had made spirit vital in the hearts of her sons; so con- 
fident was he of this, it was possible for him, on an October 
morning forever memorable in the annals of American educa- 
tion, to say to his soldier-students—our sons and brothers: 
“The spirit of this campus, the spirit of our State and 
country, the spirit of the world to-day assure to us the 


130 THe MaGgaziIne 


continuing courage and complete devotion that will bring to a 
glorious fulfillment the noblest adventure that ever called to 
the aspiring spirit of youth.” 

Extending this theory of instruction beyond the walls of 
the schoolroom, or college, or university, where students 
under skilled guidance could be led to the discovery of them- 
selves, President Graham, in notable addresses before this 
association, the North Carolina Social Conference, the 
Teachers’ Assembly, the American Bankers’ Association, 
and other State and national organizations, carried the same 
message to banker, and editor, and lawyer, and farmer. . 
Again and again he called upon men in all professions and all 
callings to make the discovery of themselves through their 
work, even though that work was infinitely removed from 
the classroom. From a hundred platforms, and with com- 
pelling eloquence, he urged them to consider their tasks in all 
their relations to the public welfare; for achievement in 
medicine, achievement in banking, achievement in agricul- 
ture, touched with fine feeling and accompanied by a genuine 
desire to find truth, he held, becomes culture and leads to the 
true art of living, to perfect citizenship. The Apostle Paul, 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, declared that the law had been 
given to serve as schoolmaster to prepare men for the new 
and better dispensation. Edward Kidder Graham, in that 
remarkably illuminating essay, “Culture and Commercial- 
ism,” declared with gripping conviction, that work, that 
achievement, that the daily task, when approached with open 
mind and sincere heart, become the teacher, the interpreter 
of the higher life, the larger citizenship; and the numerous 
addresses following it, such as “Culture, Agriculture, and 
Citizenship,” “Higher Education and Business,” ‘Banking 
and the Larger Citizenship,” ‘Prosperity and Patriotism,” 
and the call to North Carolina to spend a week in the study 
of civic problems, were but applications of this fundamental 


Epwarp Kipper GRAHAM 131 


principle to specific cases. This, ladies and gentlemen, was 
the message he brought to the classroom and the campus of 
the University; this was the gospel of sweetness and light to 
the furtherance of which he brought the quickening power 
of his magnetic personality and the resources of the State’s 
great democratic institution. And this is the vineyard in 
which he would have us go work to-day. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I have not set down in this memorial 
record any of the data of Graham’s brilliant career: of his 
life as a student on the campus, of his distinctive service as 
professor and dean, of the high position in the sisterhood of 
American universities to which he brought his Alma Mater, 
and of the significant recognition he quickly won in the field 
of national leadership. I have not spoken of his inspiring 
personality, or of those radiant qualities of mind and heart 
by which he drew and bound men to him as with cords of 
steel; or of the glow of comprehending friendship felt by 
those who shared with him the joyous companionship of his 
fireside. Nor have I referred, except by inference, to the 
fervor of his eloquence by which he moved the hearts of men, 
or to his deft skill in words with which he clothed his thought. 
And until now I have left unnoted, except in casual way, the 
all-too-compressed sheaf of essays and occasional papers 
which came from his pen in leisure hours—such as “The 
Poetry of John Charles McNeil,” ‘A North Carolina 
Teacher,” “The Essays of Dr. Crothers,” “The Reading of 
Children,” “The Greatness of Two Great Men,” “Happiness” 
—papers characterized by grace and playful humorousness of 
style, the counterpart of his more militant mood, and ex- 
pressive of his fine spirituality and large humanhood. 

Since his death, other members of this association, from 
various platforms and through publications of wide circula- 
tion, have paid loving tribute to him as teacher, executive, 
interpreter of culture and democracy, as leader in State and 


nation, as speaker and writer of virile power, and as radiant 


personality and inspirer of men. Furthermore, yours has 
the fortune, as well as mine, to walk with him, teache! in 
interpreter of the citizenship of the new day, in joyous com- 
radeship, and you, as well as I, know how far short wo ds 
fail to portray the values of a tite which can best be described 
in terms of spirit or pure flame. Therefore, I have hele 

myself to the strict limitations assigned me by your Secre- ; 
tary. And so, in this tense hour, this time of turmoil and 
pregnant flux, when men, for personal or class advantage, 
forget the relations of their tasks to the public welfare; this 
moment of the nation’s peril when clear-visioned leaders such 


rE 


as he are ee to catch up and bear aloft the tone no 


be 


work the PE GH of 9th ae RS or aaa Be 
simplest Latin fables, but sent every one of his pupils” out 
into life with an ideal of citizenship and an ambition ee 

and do something worth while for the State. In this mom nt 


these led ringing ee he called us: : 
“Where shall we begin this necessary task of realizing our 
dream of commonwealth that will be satisfied with nothing 
less than the common weal of all? Where, but here and now? 
Nothing can act but where it is. Our greatest lesson is. to 
learn that these streets and stores and fields—the earth and 
the sky in all of their daily manifestations—are but ‘folds 
across the face of God’; that the ‘Thy will’ for which we 
daily pray will be done hare and now or nowhere; and that 


